Bio

Nii Ashitey Nsotse, musician from Ghama was born April 19th, 1955 in Avenor close to Ghanas capital Accra. Through his family he came in touch with traditional african music at a very young age. His father taught him drumming from the age of ten years on. A few years later, Nii Ashitey decided to attend classes at National Folcloristic Company Arts Councel of Ghana, to become a professional musician. He left from National Art Council with the degree of a National Drummer, which includes a master degree not only in drumming, but also in building of drums, dancing and singing.

Nii Ashitey was a member of the National Folkloric Company, which represented Ghana at the Commonwealth Games in Canada, and he is one of the founders of the Nafac-Festivals, one of the most important music festivals in Ghana.

1972 Nii Ashitey joined the group Nokoko. The group changed their name to Nokoko Yé, when they decided to play even more traditional music of Ghana. After a extensive tour through Togo, Benin and Nigeria, Nii Ashitey came to Germany in 1983, where he immediately started teaching african drumming and dancing.

He was a member of the group Susu Bilibi, until in 1985 he decided to bring his old group Nokoko Yé to Germany. As soon as the group touched German ground they started touring all over Germany and other European countries.

Since 1986, togehther with Nokoko Yé, Nii Ashitey recorded three albums. Together with Kassoum Traoré from Mali, he recorded the extraordinary album "Bushtaxi from Bamako to Accra", which was released in 2002. For the first time a complete album was dedicated to the combination of Kpanlogo drums and Djembe. Unusual and even experimental in a sense, the album was a great success - also due to the extraordinary technical performance of the two musicians.

Apart from his profession as a stage musician, Nii Ashitey is teaching at several schools for adult- and youth-education like the SRH-Fachschule Heidelberg, the Music-School Südliche Bergstraße, the Volkshochschule Weinheim, the Sparkassenstiftung Heppenheim. Since 20 years he is offering workshops at the „Traumfabrik“ at the University of Regensburg and since 2013 Nii Ashitey is also taking part on the Traumfabrik Theatre-Tour.

Moreover, he is offering Drumming-Workshops for young football-players at the Dietmar-Hopp-Jugendförderzentrum „Anpfiff-ins-Leben“.

In 2013 Nii Ashitey opened his school for drumming and dance Nokoko Ye Village in Ghana as a centre to bring musicians of different cultures together. In cooperation with the two musicians Heinz Grobmeier and Helmut C. Kaiser, with ghanaeian musicians and the Goethe-Institute in Accra, the latest CD Global Seed was created.